Movie Review: No Strings Attached

Director: Ivan Reitman

Starring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher

To start off the year Natalie Portman stars along side comic actor Ashton Kutcher in the romantic comedy No Strings Attached.  The film is about two people have met off and on over the years and continually have a kind a chemistry that culminates in them agreeing to be sex friends.  But of course can two people have sex and not let emotions get involved with their plans? 
     Portman dazzles as the Emma, the fun loving girl that prefers to not get emotionally involved in a relationship.  The character of course isn't a challenge Portman since the character is somewhat to that of Sam from Garden State, except for the emotional withholding and quadruple amounts of sex.  She continues to make you love her, no matter what I do, but it isn't that hard to figure out how the character ends up.   
     Ashton Kutcher is adorable as the slightly in over his head Adam.  The character is very similar to his character Oliver from A Lot Like Love, again except for a lot more sex happening in the film.  He plays that perfect kind of guy that you really wouldn't mind bringing home and waking up to over and over.  The chemistry between Portman and Kutcher was very believable which made it kind of awkward for me to watch the first sex scene (no real skin showing), especially because I was sitting next to an 11yr old.
      One of the most surprising things about the film was the Ivan Reitman directed the film. Reitman's last film about five years ago, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, was not much of a success and his biggest films were in the late 1970s and early 1990s.   Most of his film have only been comedies but none of them romantic comedies so, I assume that he decided he was trying something new.
         The film is full of comedic moments that don't appear in the trailer so you will continue to laugh through out the movie.  In the beginning it does have a few week points that don't seem like great transitional scenes but after the first fifteen minutes there aren't really any more moments like that. The supporting cast is great and if you don't actually read the cast list you are surprised by who pops up in the film.
    Even though I liked the film I think that it is fine to wait until this film gets to DVD because it is pretty much the predictable Romantic Comedy.  If you do go see the film it is best seen as a date film to win you points with your date for later (if your date loves Ashton Kutcher or Natalie Portman).  It is not really a repeat watch movie in the theater but will be great as a repeat DVD watch.

From BBC to American TV

      I love to watch movies and television programming from all over the world as well as the stuff that is made in America but lately I have started to see too many repeats.  I don't mean that everything is now in a rerun but that many shows have been taken from other countries and turned into American film or television.  Concentrating on television for the moment I would like to point out two television series that are premiering tonight; Skins and Being Human.

      Skins is a show about a group of friends that hang out, party and deal with the small stuff on an everyday basis.  The premise in itself is not very original at all because just about any teen show sounds like that but the thing is that Skins has already been a show on BBC running for 5 seasons (or series as they call it across the ocean).  From what I have understood the premiere episode of the MTV version which airs tonight is pretty identical to pilot of the original and from what I have seen from the commercials there may only be small differences that set them apart from the original. Currently the only things that I can catch that are different are that the names of the characters have changed, one of the characters that was in the original show (the character is Cassie in the original show ) who was a blond haired Caucasian girl will be played by a light skinned African American girl (I think the character name was changed to Cadie) and from what I can tell it appears that the gay character in the original show (Maxie) was either written out or changed into a lesbian character (Tea).  In the end the pilot episode will tell all about whether it could be accepted or not.  If you are interested in watching the original Skins can be rented on Netflix in either the DVD format or streaming.
To read up on the original Skins and the MTV version of skins:
Imdb Skins original   MTV Skins
Websites Skins original    MTV Skins

Then there is the new Sci Fi series Being Human.  It looks neat and a total thing that Sci Fi would do; A vampire and werewolf become roommates with a ghost and they must deal with how they will try to blend in on the everyday scale of things. Then as I was looking this progam on imdb I stumbled across the original version of the show.  Low and behold Being Human was also a BBC television show that lasted two seasons (series) on television with the exact same concept but named that characters had different names.  It was a little frustrating to see it.  With the new version coming out tonight and me only finding out about the original today I don't know how similar the shows will be so, I will be adding the original to my Netflix DVD queue and will not be able to further explain it until later.
For reading material on both versions
Website Being Human original   Being Human SyFy
Imdb Being Human original   Being Human SyFy

There one last series that I would like to mention that premiered last week on Showtime and that is the series Shameless, starring William H. Macy.  The show is about a dysfunctional family where the dad is drunk, the oldest child is trying to keep the family together, the mom has skipped out, the rest of the children are a little off and the baby may be a different ethnicity.  This was added to Showtime's line up of comedy Monday but when I saw commercials on the internet I knew the name and premise was very familiar and it dawned on my that this too had been a BBC show.  And now after doing some research I have found out the show is still going.  I have only watched one episode of the original because I could only catch it when episodes ran on IFC and I could only watch that at my parent's house but they look like they may be very much similar.  If you have any interest in seeing the original I again recommend Netflix but it seems that it can also be watched on channel4.com and the Showtime version can be watched on TV.com.

Website   Shameless BBC  Shameless Showtime
Imdb Shameless BBC    Shameless Showtime

Please leave your opinions on any of these shows below

Update Jan 21: The pilot episode of the Showtime's version of Shameless is currently not available on TV.com.